Why Pope Francis Is Wrong About Capitalism
His position is both Biblically and empirically false.
by Rod D. Martin
May 23, 2013
This week, the new Pope gave his first major speech on economics to a group of foreign ambassadors to the Vatican. In it, he demanded more government control over the economy, decried the gap between rich and poor, and called on the world’s leaders to end “the tyranny of money.”
This is most unfortunate, not least in that the Pope’s comments are utterly self-defeating. Francis admirably seeks the alleviation of poverty and the mindfulness of the wealthy toward the poor. But his comments miss the mark, in several key ways.
1. Nothing in human history has done so much to alleviate human poverty as free market capitalism. Nothing. This shouldn’t even be a controversial statement. The entire world lived in vastly greater poverty than the Pope’s slum-dwelling parishioners in (socialist) Argentina prior to the Industrial Revolution, a mere 250 years ago; moreover, they had lived in exactly that level of poverty since at least Noah’s flood.
Were there redistrib…